This project involves collection, in the Syrian Arab Republic, of clinical information and blood samples for genotyping from highly inbred families with many members affected with cleft lip and palate. Cooperation with Syrian local investigators and a month long visit to Syria by Dr. Wyszynski when he was an NIH postdoctoral fellow have resulted in collection of many large pedigrees suitable for linkage analysis. Data collection is ongoing. A 10 cM homozygosity mapping genome scan has been completed with no positive results. A collaboration with Dr. Terri Beaty of JHUSPH has been initiated to increase power. Our samples from the first two large Syrian families were genotyped at CIDR along with Dr. Beaty's samples from several other sites and collaborative linkage analyses have been performed. Fine-mapping of several candidate regions implicated by suggestive lod scores has been performed and two papers presenting evidence for linkage to several candidate regions have been published. In addition, we have participated with Dr. Mary Marazita on a metaanalysis of our families and a large set of families from other investigators. The results of this metaanalysis have implicate several regions and have been published in this fiscal year. New Syrian families have been genotyped for genome-wide scan markers and analyses of these data are ongoing. Data collection is also ongoing in Syria.